The Real Super Mario Has Passed Away

Mario Segale was a property developer who rented a warehouse to Nintendo of America.

(CCM) — The man after whom Nintendo's Super Mario game character was named has died in the U.S., aged 84, the BBC is reporting.

Mario Segale was not a plumber, however. In fact he was a Washington-based property developer, and in the 1980s he rented a warehouse to Nintendo of America. At the time Nintendo was looking for a new name for a character provisionally called "Jumpman", and someone at the company decided that "Mario" would fit the bill.

Minoru Arakawa, Nintendo of America's chief at the time, confirmed to Segale that the character had been named after him, according to the report.

The Super Mario Bros game franchise is one of the most successful ever released. A successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros, the first Super Mario Bros console game was released in 1985. The latest game, Super Mario Odyssey, was released in 2017. It is currently the best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch platform, with over 12 million units having been purchased by fans around the world.